Not slumming it: City of God and the Latin American continuum.(Movie Review) (movie review)

"ON THE FAIR GREEN HILLS OF RIO / There grows a fearful stain / The poor who come to Rio / And can't go home again." So wrote Elizabeth Bishop, although a visitor to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, is just as likely to find something eerily beautiful in the apparition of the favelas, or slums, that litter the hillsides around the city. From a distance, at least, and at night, their disordered plenitude of lights has a fairy-like effect.

Fernando Meirelles' City of God, the latest Latin American film to take on the slums, is a semi-fictional account of a decade of gang life ...

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